They create a fake story about a new feature to promote the app. And then they work out how to create fake text messages. I don't like the approach they used. Get real users to provide a real testimonials instead.

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gyomu 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Welcome to promoting your product baby. No one cares if it's fake or not except the little voice in your head.

If you can post fake messages today that promote your product and will start getting you users, why wait for real users to provide real testimonials that align with what you want to communicate to do the same thing 3 months from now?

Of course you want to seek out real testimonials from satisfied customers and share those as much as you can; you don't want to lock yourself in a bubble where you post how amazing your app is while emails of dissatisfied users pile up in your inbox; but it's not an OR situation, it's an AND situation.

You might also be surprised to hear that the family laughing together while drinking Coca Cola in those video ads isn't a real family, they're not really having fun, and they're not really enjoying Coca Cola for the sake of it - they're on a filming set in front of a green screen paid by the hour.

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nucleogenesis 3 hours ago | parent [-]

For me it’s just that I just don’t want to lie to make money.

Commercials are on their face a work of fiction unless stated otherwise — for customer testimonials in commercials that are fake (in the US anyway) there has to be text saying as much. Because otherwise they’d be lying…

	▲	an0malous an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The sad reality is that many others have no such qualms and you will lose to them in a competition, many of the largest YC companies used deceptive practices to get to their level of success
	▲	gyomu 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I don't see any lies in the screenshots from the original article being discussed here. They are a staged conversation with a contact named "Speedometer FAQ" - not pretending like it's with a real person, or real customer testimonials. If it makes you feel better, you could put "simulated text messages" at the bottom of such images.

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levocardia 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Indeed. I would love a better post about "how to do authentic marketing without devolving into the worst caricature of a social media marketing bro."